Page 31 of Shifters in the Night

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She stood up, suddenly embarrassed to be found wallowing on her couch. She needed to do something. She needed to stop overthinking everything. She needed pie.

“Thanks, Jeff, I appreciate it,” she said, grabbing her purse. “I’m going to go on a break. Take a walk.”

“But you’ll stay on Main Street, right?” Jeff asked.

She tilted her head and eyed him curiously. Why would Jeff (or Victor) need to know where she was going? It was broad daylight outside, so it wasn’t like he should be concerned for her safety. If she was running across the street to buy tampons, fungal cream and illegal fireworks, that was none of Jeff’s business.

She thought back over the previous weeks and realized this behavior had been subtly building since to their arrival in Mystic Bayou. Jeff had gone from being merely curious as to where she was going, to asking when she would be back, who she was going to see. And while it wasn’t entirely out of the question for him to ask about her plans for the previously mentioned safety purposes while they were staying in a new place, this felt … different. Maybe it was because they were living within ten feet of each other as opposed to a hotel, where she had a little more privacy. Was she just feeling it more here, or was this something different? Was Victor asking Jeff to follow her movements?

Why?

Victor had never shown any interest in her beyond professional. And what was all the “your loyalty is to my company, not the locals” stuff about? Did he think she was getting too close to her local connections or was he protecting his outlandish ambitions for the Bayou?

This was where the whole “dead zone” with Victor and Jeff’s emotions became a real inconvenience.

Poor Jeff. His loyalty had always been to his uncle, but they’d always been so friendly. She hated to think that he felt pressured to watch her, report on her.

“It’s just a walk,” she told him.

“Sure,” he said, his expression concerned. “Go recharge. I’ll hold things down here.”

“I will try to come back with a more cheerful frame of mind,” she told him as she walked out.

The fresh air did her a lot of good as she trod down Main Street. Sonja and Jillian were walking with purpose toward one of the science trailers. They waved as she walked by, but didn’t stop, so she figured they had an important appointment. She saw Ingrid through the front window of her shop and it warmed her chest when the woman stopped and waved to her. Just seeing the town in the golden afternoon light was enough to draw Lia out of her funk. Not entirely, but enough that she stopped to admire the stone fountain and toss a penny in it. She’d almost reached the pie shop when she spotted Zed up on a ladder, hanging a giant banner across the street announcing the date for Founder’s Day.

“Hey, bebelle!” he called. “Whatcha think?”

She almost blurted everything out right there, like ill-advised word vomit. But she had to think everything through. She had to plan. She would bring Zed into those plans when the time was right. So she pasted a bright smile on her face and said, “Nice banner, Mr. Mayor!”

“I’ll be along in a minute,” he yelled as she opened the shop door. “Got a hankering for afternoon pie, myself.”

Much like her first visit, there were very few open seats in the pie shop. The room buzzed with conversation and violently hued emotions. Alex Lancaster sat at a booth in the corner alone. He stuck his hand up and waved her over with a broad grin.

For a second, she hesitated. It didn’t feel right, to sit with Alex, someone she found attractive, when she had all these confusing feelings for Jon. And Alex obviously felt attraction in return. The sunrise haze of red and lavender around him was more than enough proof. It felt disloyal, to Jon and Alex to get Alex’s hopes up.

But … if Jon was attracted to Eva, maybe this was for the best.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s just pie,” she whispered to herself and crossed the black-and-white tile floor. She lifted her shield, because the haze of emotions rolling off of her fellow diners was overwhelming. Love and anxiety and hope and … indignation and helpless anger and … what in the hell? Her head whipped toward the swirling red-ochre-orange cloud hanging over a booth where Burt Bremmer sat with a handful of people, complaining loudly, “What do we need an apartment building for? If people are going to stay here long-term, they’re not going to live in apartments! We need neighborhoods of single-family homes! That’s how you build stability! That’s how you—”

Dr. Bremmer pursed his lips together as she approached. She supposed that not shit-talking her project right in front of her was the polite thing to do.

“I don’t know about all that,” an older man in a Mystic Parish Co-Op baseball cap replied. “But I’m not much on having to wait twenty minutes at the check-out at the hardware store because it’s so dang crowded. I had to circle around the block four times just to find a parking spot on Main Street. You used to be able to just pull in wherever you wanted.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad, Jeb,” an elderly lady countered. “And you were the one complaining about how your kids moved away because there was nothing to keep them in the Bayou. Maybe if the town gets a little bigger, we won’t lose so many of our young people.”

Lia knew she should probably stop and do a little ground-level PR for the project, argue some points with Dr. Bremmer and his coffee-klatch of grumps, but she just didn’t have it in her to deal with another opponent on her chessboard. She was tired. She just wanted pie. She would deal with it later.

“Hi!” Alex exclaimed as he stood up, gesturing to the opposite chair. “Good to see you.”

“I needed a pick-me-up,” she told him as they sat.

“Rough afternoon?” he asked, prompting her to nod. Like Zed, she would have to bring Alex into “the know” when the time was right – even with his warnings about heading off problems early in the Bayou. She needed Victor to give her more ammunition against him. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Just busy.” She scanned the table and realized that just like her first visit, she still didn’t see a menu, not even a little card on the table or a display board over the counter.

“Do they bring us menus?” she asked.

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